Nothing above a “T” rating is in my class, but I notice a Teen rating says “May contain violence, profanity, and semi-nudity.” By “Moderate Language” do you mean “damn,” “crap,” and “Oh my God!” or more severe? Crude Humor, Sexual Innuendo, Mild Sexual language, Mild Sexuality/Sexual Themes, et al, leaves a lot of room for me not catching something and a parent complaining.

Some parents do object to profanity and semi-nudity over violence.

(I noticed CMX titles are more specific, e.g. T-Mild Violence.)

I wish I could read them all cover-to-cover, but I don’t have the time.

Thank you for any help!

[...] program currently in place. (A program which Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading has covered and criticized before [be sure to check out the comments of those articles on Johanna's site for [...]

[...] 2007: New rating system much more [...]

Oh, and I meant “one THAT comes from a completely different culture.” Some editor I am. :P

There won’t be an exhaustive list of indicators on the back of the book–that would be awful–rather, the ratings committee will list the indicators (usually just a few) that ultimately determined the book’s rating on the back of the book next to the standard rating symbol.

As for whether stuff like cross-dressing and gender-switching weren’t chosen as an indicator… believe you me, Ms. Gorman and our ratings committee have done exhaustive research and worked it down to (something close to) a science. They had a ready answer for every curveball I and the other editors fired their way. So if something like that, which pops up a lot and might make certain parents uncomfortable, wasn’t chosen as an indicator, I’d be very much surprised if the ratings people hadn’t determined that it was generally accompanied one or more of the other indicators (“mild innuendo,” etc.) that were chosen.

At any rate, each unique series will be judged individually, and hopefully consumers, booksellers and buyers will find the system more useful than confusing.

(Sheesh, I feel like a frikkin’ press release all by myself. I’m just really excited at the idea of a less arbitrary system, that’s all. It can be really challenging for an editor to determine the audience appropriateness of any series–let alone one the comes from a completely different culture! So hopefully this new system will help us editors out, too.)

[...] Tokyopop’s new ratings system, including some specifics on how it will be used. Johanna has more at Comics Worth Reading, including a link to the ratings criteria, and the commenters speculate on [...]

I’ve never understood the term “partial nudity”. I’m not wearing a burka at the moment; does that make me partially nude?

And I think the libraries would be better served by relying on either their own judgment or on some third party’s judgment (such as Library’s Journal’s) than to trust the publisher to tell them where the danger spots are with their books.